Younger Boy is on a cycle in therapy.

I know this because his therapist pointed it out to me this week.

They film him at every session...for a couple of reasons.  They are trauma therapy trainers and they use him in their training sessions.  He is also able to dissociate in a way that no other therapists believe without seeing it on video.  He is part of some trauma research being done and it is part of the documentation.

The cycle looks like this.  We have a "breakthrough" in therapy and a GREAT session.  The following week at home is complete chaos and the next session is spent talking about kooky behaviors and why they happened.

They believe that it is a subconscious effort to feel NO FEELINGS.

We had a week where we talked about past abuses at former homes...he cried and cried in the session.

The following week we talked about why he stole things from a store.

We talked about how angry he was at his biological parents.

The following week he had to be given a protection order for our dogs, because he was hitting and kicking them.

We talked about how he doesn't need a mom, because moms are mean and can't be trusted anyway.

The following week he shot himself in the finger with a BB gun and lied to the doctor in the emergency room.  Told her he slammed his finger in a door and the BB had been there since childhood.  Has to have surgery on his finger to remove the BB.

We talked about how he wishes he lived with all of his biological siblings and trauma bond.

Last night he banged his head on the bathroom wall so hard that there are three holes there that he "might have" done.

Slowly...we are getting there ever so slowly. 

Pray he can feel safe enough to actually feel his feelings and to know that he can handle them.